Before Maybelline there was Lash-Brow-Ine.

  

"Before and After" ad for Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

 In 1915, women were just starting to accept cosmetics again, after avoiding them during the Victorian era. Creams and powders prevailed on the market; however, eye make-up remained all but taboo.  In England, social constraints against cosmetics, including lash color, persisted well into the Victorian age, though business was brisk in back-alley beauty services. 

Proper English ladies of the nineteenth century considered make–up to be off-limits, the province of prostitutes whose penchant for cosmetics earned them the label “painted women.”  Viewed as appropriate only for prostitutes and music-hall performers, make-up was so forbidden in Victorian society a man could divorce his wife for wearing it.

Directions inside a box of Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

While the American colonies were under British rule, the use of white powder, rouge and lipstick was brisk. After the revolution, cosmetics became political. For example, an unpainted face was a sign of a good Republican. Women were expected to pinch their cheeks and bite their lips if they hoped to brighten their faces. Men enjoyed greater leeway. They could and did, dye and condition their hair, mustaches and sideburns, often with a touch-up dye for graying hair called Mascaro, from which Tom Later derived the word mascara.

Yet, the onset of the silent movies in the early 1900’s was changing the way society viewed cosmetics, as alluring actresses such as Theda Bara and other screen stars glamorized the painted look once associated with prostitution.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra, in 1917

Women began to enter the work force and began to build independent lives for themselves, making fashion and beauty a bit more robust.  At the same time, women were beginning to organize for their political rights, holding suffragist rallies for right to vote. In New York in 1913, more than one parade of Suffragettes marched down Fifth Avenue past a salon owned by a woman named Elizabeth Arden.  Arden in New York, along with Helena Rubinstein in England, opened the first beauty salons in the cosmetics business, specializing solely in skin products.

"The Eternal Flapper" 1918 Maybelline Model remained eternally young with secret facial creams

You probably never heard of Fannie Ward, known as the Eternal Flapper, best remembered for her role in  Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat 1915, or of  Tom Lyle Williams, who founded Maybel Laboratories and introduced a new eye beautifier, called Lash Brow Ine, in 1915. Tom Lyle was 19, Fannie, was 43, though she appeared much younger than her age. You can see how young she looks in this 1918 Maybelline Ad.  It was said, that her personality is what gave her that girlish look.

Fannie, was a front runner for her generation, and generations to come, with her obsession to look young and beautiful as she aged. She used secret facial treatments, and opened a Paris beauty shop called “The Fountain of Youth” in 1926, though in 1925 she'd been talking about opening a salon in New York to compete with Helena Rubinstein, and Elizabeth Arden.  It never happened.

 Fannie's ageless appearance helped her become a celebrity. An obituary described her as "an actress who never quite reached the top in her profession ... [and who] tirelessly devoted herself to appearing perpetually youthful, an act that made her famous".^[2]

^{Tom Lyle Williams, renamed Lash Brow Ine to Maybelline in 1916 in honor
of his sister Mabel Williams who gave him the idea for mascara. Maybelline
ads continued to feature the most beautiful stars in Hollywood. Maybelline
is still the number one mascara in the world 104 years later.}   

From the Logansport Journal, May 25, 1895

Fannie Ward Lewis with daughter Dorothe Mabel, Logansport Reporter, June 2, 1908

Burr McIntosh Monthly, July 1907 issue.

Fannie Ward and Jack Dean make their film debut in The Marriage of Kitty. Ad from the Warren Evening Times, September 18, 1915.

The Cheat

Fannie Ward made her film debut earlier in 1915 for Paramount in a film titled The Marriage of Kitty. Jack Dean made his first movie appearance in this same title. They left their lasting legacy in Cecil B. De Mille’s The Cheat, released by Paramount about two weeks prior to their marriage.

Fannie Ward and Jack Dean in The Cheat

T

Sessue Hayakawa and Fannie Ward in The Cheat

Sessue Hayakawa and Fannie Ward in The Cheat

Later Years

Fannie Ward and Jack Dean remained active for Paramount through the remainder of the 1910s and Fannie kept busy with sporadic sojourns into vaudeville throughout the 1920s.

The offending cartoon, by Sem

.

Fannie Ward photo used with A.P. obituary published nationwide January 28, 1952

.

The Cheat starring Fannie Ward, Sessue Hayakawa and Jack Dean. It can be viewed online on YouTube or the Internet Archive. It is also available on this DVD from Kino which also includes Leatrice Joy in another early DeMille title, Manslaughter (1922).

Fannie Ward, also known as Fanny Ward^[1] (born Fannie Buchanan; February 22, 1872 – January 27, 1952) was an American actress of stage and screen, known for comedic roles as well as The Cheat, a sexually-charged 1915 silent film directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

On January 25, 1952, Ward was found unconscious in her Park Avenue apartment after a stroke. She never regained consciousness and died two days later. She was 79 years old.

Now here she is with Jack Dean and Sessue Hayakawa in
 The Cheat:

BE A GUEST BLOGGER ON THE MAYBELLINE BOOK BLOG.

Sharrie Williams, 1992.

Write a review of your favorite Maybelline product or Blog about anything "Maybelline" you're passionate about.  Add a picture of yourself and I will PR it for you on my Blog, Tweeter and Facebook. 
Send post and contact info to...

maybellinebook@gmail.com

Maybelline's little sister Lash-Brow-Ine in 1915.

                                       Before Maybelline
                 there was Lash-Brow-Ine.

"Before and After" ad for Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

 In 1915, women were just starting to accept cosmetics again, after avoiding them during the Victorian era. Creams and powders prevailed on the market; however, eye make-up remained all but taboo.  In England, social constraints against cosmetics, including lash color, persisted well into the Victorian age, though business was brisk in back-alley beauty services. 

Proper English ladies of the nineteenth century considered
make–up to be off-limits, the province of prostitutes whose penchant for cosmetics earned them the label “painted women.”  Viewed as appropriate only for prostitutes and music-hall performers, make-up was so forbidden in
Victorian society a man could divorce his wife for wearing it.

Directions inside a box of Lash-Brow-Ine, 1915.

While the American colonies were under British rule, the use of white powder, rouge and lipstick was brisk. After the revolution, cosmetics became political. For example, an unpainted face was a sign of a good Republican.
Women were expected to pinch their cheeks and bite their lips if they hoped to brighten their faces. Men enjoyed greater leeway. They could and did, dye and condition their air, mustaches and sideburns, often with a touch-up dye for graying hair called Mascaro, from which Tom Later derived the word mascara.

Yet, the onset of the silent movies in the early 1900’s was changing the way society viewed cosmetics, as alluring actresses such as Theda Bara and other screen stars glamorized the painted look once associated with prostitution.

Theda Bara as Cleopatra, in 1917

Women began to enter the work force and began to build independent lives for themselves, making fashion and beauty a bit more robust.  At the same time, women were beginning to organize for their political rights, holding suffragist rallies for right to vote. In New York in 1913, more than one parade of Suffragettes marched down Fifth Avenue past a salon owned by a woman named Elizabeth Arden.  Arden in New York, along with Helena Rubinstein in England, opened the first beauty salons in the cosmetics business, specializing solely in skin products.


Read more about the birth of Lash-Brow-Ine and Maybelline in The Maybelline Story and the Spirited Family Dynasty Behind It.  You can now purchase an autographed cope directly from me by clicking on maybellinestory.com under the picture of the book. 

I will be posting my radio interview on Voice America next Monday, and will be doing the Dare to Dream radio show on May 11th.  Stay tuned for more exciting tid bits and Maybelline trivia from those wonderful days gone by.